Fracking ‘worth exploring’ says British Gas owner Centrica
Fracking could boost UK energy supplies and reduce bills, according to Chris O’Shea, chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica.
The UK government placed a moratorium on fracking in 2019, amid fierce local opposition and fears of earthquakes.
Mr O’Shea said there needed to be an “informed debate” about it.
However, environmental group Greenpeace said there had been “a decade of hype and bluster” around shale gas.
Fracking is the process of drilling into the earth, then directing a high pressure mixture of chemicals into layers of rock to release shale gas.
“We do have to be careful, if it does cause earthquakes, it’s not something we should do,” Mr O’Shea said.
The UK met 48% of its gas demand from domestic supplies in 2020, and bought the rest on international markets, according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Mr O’Shea told BBC Radio 5Live’s Big Green Money show: “The key question is, do we want to source our gas from overseas? Or do we want to have more gas domestically? And shale is certainly worth exploring.”
The UK has only ever had one fracking site in operation, which halted in 2019 following a report by the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA).
The indefinite suspension came after the OGS found was not possible to predict the probability or size of tremors caused by the practice.
However, this year regulators gave owners Cuadrilla an extra year to re-evaluate the site before it could be sealed up in 2023.
Mr O’Shea urged informed debate on fracking.
“I can’t tell you what the right answer is, but I can tell you we don’t achieve that by people taking entrenched positions that are not based on the full facts,” he said.
He added that British Gas and Centrica had held off discontinuing a share in a fracking licence while it waits to see if the government will revive the possibility of shale gas extraction.
“We have a small residual share in a fracking licence which we were in the process of discontinuing,” he said.
“What we’ve decided to do is just hold off for a year.”
In March, the Energy Minister Greg Hands said in Parliament that shale gas “could be part of our future energy mix,” but added that it would need the “support of local communities.”
Mr Hands also said the government was clear that the gas was “not the solution to near-term issues,” adding that it would take years before commercial quantities could be produced.
A group of Tory MPs known as the Net Zero Scrutiny Group has been pushing for the government to end its fracking ban saying that it could help secure energy supplies for Britain.
Many environmental groups have said they were concerned about the potential for fracking to cause earthquakes.
At Cuadrilla’s site in Lancashire, more than 120 small tremors were recorded while it was drilling.
Rosie Rogers, head of energy at Greenpeace UK, told the BBC: “After a decade of hype and bluster, all the fracking industry has given us are two holes in a muddy field and some minor earthquakes.”
Previously, Greenpeace has said that fracking would not improve energy security, because any gas extracted would belong to the gas firm doing the drilling, not to Britain, and it would be sold on international markets.
“It will take many years to develop and if it ever gets produced, it will be sold to the highest bidder on the international market, with no impact on our energy bills,” a Greenpeace spokesperson said.
“If the UK and Europe want to end their dependence on Russian gas, the quickest way to do that is by insulating homes, installing heat pumps and boosting renewables.”
See more here: bbc.co.uk
Header image: Getty Images
Editor’s note: According to the British Geological Survey, aroud 200 to 300 earthquakes of between 3.0 and 3.9 magnitude are recorded in the UK each year, most of which go unnoticed. The current cut-off point for fracking-induced earthquakes in the UK is 0.5 on the Richter scale, so slight it is doubtful you would even feel it.
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Ogmios
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Mr O’Shea is a fool, does he not read any of the literature produced by his own industry? He should know the magnitude of the tremors fracking will produce, small tremors the not very scientific description for the Cuadrilla site per the article yet he somehow equates this with earthquakes. He’s probably unaware of the difference in the heat output of a bonfire to that of the sun. With apologies to all the fools out there who are offended by being likened to Mr O’Shea.
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Mark Tapley
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Hello Ogmios:
You must have been listening to the globalist’s fake Greenpeace shills. Fracking is a widely used procedure that only uses solvents to open fissures in oil sand layers. It is just an improved way to recover oil and gas over just using the old water flood method. It does not effect anything on the surface, much less induce earth quakes. The Greenpeace actors always want to halt any logical means of producing energy and its transportation. On the other hand they are all for whatever Zionist “Green Energy” disaster the globalist are pushing including the installation of the environmentally destructive massive windmill farms blotting millions of acres along with the solar panel scam that requires huge amounts of carbon fuels to produce and then cause an environmental disposal problem.
All the environmental scare propaganda reminds me of when to Iraqis blew up the well heads of hundreds of the Kuwait oil and gas wells. Now as to why all of these wells did not have subsurface safety valves is a major question. But the environmentalists were hollering about how all of that oil and gas would ruin the world and never be cleaned up. The wells were all plugged (as I stated they should have automatically shut with subsurface safety valves) within a short time and nothing else was heard about it. Oil production has powered our entire civilization now for well over a hundred years. If the modern technology of directional drilling and fracking is your biggest problem, then you don’t have much to worry about.
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Howdy
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Hi Mark,
Other than the quakes, that I’m not convinced of the possible mass destructive outcome at this moment in time, I was thinking about at the waste hydraulic fluid and other remnants. Pumping it deep underground doesn’t really work because as I’ve seen before, it can migrate back to the surface in another location.
Trucking it to treatment plants is rather quaint, and open pits is, I believe, equally ridiculous in this age of technology. Surely the waste should be treated on-site.
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Mark Tapley
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Hi Howdy:
The fracking process has been done on a large scale fora long time. It is used on many locations where water flood is no longer economical to bring old fields back to life. On site separators, scrubbers, etc. are used all over the world, both onshore and offshore with rarely an incident. These wells are thousands of feet down working in a particular oil sands and there is nothing coming back up. The pits are for recycled water that is treated to remove any trace chemicals. When the well is finished the whole place will look better than it did to start with.
lots of people fail to realize that there are many large metropolitan areas where many millions of barrels of crude oil, petroleum products and chemicals are stored in massive tank farms. Houston Tx. has miles of chemical plants and an extensive pipeline system to move offshore oil all over the country 365 days per year. Right down from Houston is the site for strategic oil reserve which holds ap. 600 million barrels of oil in underground caverns.
If the cucks in England don’t want to utilize the resources God provided for them in their own back yard, then they can put up the inefficient windmill eyesores and pay a lot more for an inherently faulty power system while they freeze in their “Green Energy” delusion. One thing is certain. Gates with his fleet of kerosine guzzling jets and helicopters ain’t going to be worried about it.
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Howdy
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Hi Mark,
If the cleansing plant is on-site, they don’t need trucks. Reuse the water as hydraulic fluid. What I’m on about is the sludge that accumulates on site. As far as I see, it cannot be made pure enough to reintroduce to the environment
Seems things are underway anyway, but the anti-fracking groups are not happy:
https://frack-off.org.uk/mounting-evidence-the-harm-caused-by-fracking/
“Ministers order fracking survey two days before unveiling new energy strategy ”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/ministers-order-fracking-survey-two-days-before-unveiling-new-energy-strategy/ar-AAVSn0l
No choice have they….
Brian James
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6th April 2022 Brits support an end to fracking ban
“The cost of living has already become the number one concern to voters, and with the effect of soaring energy bills yet to really hit, these figures show that the government urgently needs to reconsider its stances on Net Zero and the shale gas moratorium.”
https://www.netzerowatch.com/brits-support-an-end-to-fracking-ban/
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Howdy
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Hi Brian,
If Bojo follows the usual trend, he’ll about face. Only problem is, it will give the UK an upper hand in self sufficiency and living conditions, yet current global action wants the opposite for any country. Still Putin has thrown a spanner in the works there too.
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Mark Tapley
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Hi Howdy:
Putin just does what the big Zionists tell him to do. Just like all the other “leaders.” There has to be both external and internal conflict, uncertainty and chaos. The sheep must be kept anxious and always looking to the government for guidance. Not just as to what they should do about the fake viruses but every aspect of their existence. How do you expect the goyim to be maneuvered into the permanent martial law of the totalitarian state unless there are shortages in all basic necessities including food and fuel. Its like Klaus great Zionist teacher Kissinger said, “control the oil and control the countries. Control the food and control the people.”
From the very inception of the Bolshevik (Zionist Jew) Revolution, till the USSR was allowed to fold, it was just a transition as Lenin said.. Jewmerica kept the whole house of cards propped up. for 70 years. The same Zionists run the show today. Half Jew Putin is just the front man who pays homage to the great holohoax like all the other fake leaders.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/tUcNddMzEzZL/
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Howdy
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Hi Mark,
“Putin just does what the big Zionists tell him to do”
I don’t agree. He’s an obstacle, and I doubt he intends to embrace digital currency junk, which is why he took the action he did with the ‘Russian rubles’ thing. It’s causing a real headache. Europe and UK were allready cut off the gas for not doing as he told them.
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Mark Tapley
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Hi Howdy:
The environmental front groups for the global elite are trying everything possible to stop access to cheap and available energy. After their peak energy scam of the 80’s failed they are now back to it’s going to ruin the world mantra. These drill sites have no effect on the environment and when the well is completed, the place is dressed up better than ever. I have mentioned the massive amounts of not only crude oil and gas stored and transported right through the millions of inhabitants of Houston but all types of industrial petrol chemicals . Over 600 million barrels of oil is stored under ground just a few miles south of the city. Oil and gas has driven modern industrial civilization and thats why the Zionist environmental front groups are desperately trying to increase recovery costs and regulations of proven and reliable energy, while promoting whatever is the most expensive and unreliable forms of pretend energy.
As to Russia you are not seeing the forest for the trees. Putin is just another Zionist controlled “leader” just like Boris, Trudeau, Trump etc. along with the fake political parties. Remember Putin was trained at the feet of Klaus of the WEF which is really just an extension of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Com. and the CFR. The Zionist’s eastern kingdom has always been used in the Hegelian dialectic plan. First they (with massive agricultural, financial and technological aid) were our great allies. Then after the completely contrived WW2 they were flipped around to be our deadly enemies. The whole time this house of cards was just a facade propped up by western aid. They could not even feed their own people. In fact in 1989 they were producing less grain than when under the Czar. The Russian economy (ap. 30% held by half Jew Putin and the Jew oligarchs) depend on oil and gas. The present fake war in Ukraine is just used to distract the goyim (similar to the fake missile crisis under queer boy JFK) from the success of the truckers in destroying the fake virus mandates that no one should have consented to in the first place. The move with the rubal is just more posturing to scare the goyim.
It still must be said that the Europeans were stupid in allowing themselves to become dependent on Russia for energy. And even more stupid (as in Jewmerica) to dismantle efficient energy production facilities (coal, oil and gas) to put in fantasy island “green energy” junk. The Zionists consolidated their control over this Russian pipeline system back during the puppet Clinton ad, with the balkanization of Yugoslavia. This is something else the Europeans should keep in mind. The only alternative for supplies to be pipelined in is via through the Middle East. The Yinnon Plan for Greater Israel is shutting that door as well.
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Howdy
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Hi Mark,
“The move with the rubal is just more posturing to scare the goyim”
I do not believe so. The whole point of it is to ensure Russia can allways have access to funds. pay into Russia bank, or do without gas. That won’t be sanctioned any time soon either since it is self denial of energy, and suicidal to any government that tries it. I saw Bojo even sanctioned Gazprom. talk about biting the hand that feeds you. The man is such a clown.
https://europerenaissance.com/2021/03/07/putin-says-the-new-world-order-has-flopped/
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2022/02/27/putin-new-world-order-worships-satan/
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Mark Tapley
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Hi Howdy:
I had already stated that Putin has to have the oil revenue. Thats about all the decrepit Russian economy has. Veteran’s Today is another CIA propaganda rag pushed by the likes of Olson and his friend Jim Fetzer in their diversionary quest for 911 “energy weapons.” The favorite tool of the Zionists is the Hegelian dialectic contrived war (even better than a fake virus). Russia and China are in the process of being developed militarily so their combined forces can be used against the west in another contrived conflict as in the previous world wars. The Zionists must have hatred, and conflict in order to achieve success. Peaceful societies of independent individuals minding their own business does nothing for the establishment of the global totalitarian state we see being modeled with China’s social credit control system.
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Howdy
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Hi Mark,
“I had already stated that Putin has to have the oil revenue.”
But now he has guaranteed compliance.
“Veteran’s Today is another CIA propaganda rag”
It’s not the only link I could have posted you know. Is everybody I mention on strings?
I guess you might be surprised by what comes then..
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